Mom Has Son Snatched by Gov’t and Faces 30 Years in Prison for Medical Marijuana

By
Ana Kasparian, Raw Story
on June 26, 2015

Shona Banda had been suffering from a debilitating diagnosis of Crohn’s disease for nearly a decade before she took a colossal risk and tried medicinal marijuana. The only thing that made her last resort so risky was that the 38-year-old mother of two lives in Kansas, a state that has draconian drug laws.

Banda’s condition was devastating. According to the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America, Crohn’s is a chronic bowel disease that causes inflammation of the intestinal tract and produces an intestine that can no longer adequately absorb food and water. This can result in mild to severe diarrhea, abdominal cramping, blood loss and anemia, as well as joint pain and swelling. Banda says her joints were in so much pain that she did most of her parenting from the couch. But it all changed when started using cannabis oil.

“I’m not in my deathbed, I’m working for the first time in four years, I’m hiking, I’m swimming, I’m able to play with my kids, I’m able to do things — I love it,” Banda said.

She didn’t do much to hide the success she experienced from self-medicating with an unjustly illicit drug. She documented her experience in a memoir titled “Live Free or Die,” and also in a 2010 marijuana documentary on YouTube. She tried moving to Colorado to take advantage of the state’s drug laws, but simply couldn’t afford to move with her two kids.

Things took a turn for the worst when her 11-year-old son challenged drug “educators” at his school who were regurgitating reefer madness propaganda to his peers. He experienced his mother’s disease go into remission because of the cannabis oil she had been using, so he voiced his opinion. That came with dire consequences.

Administrators called him into their office and asked how frequently his mother was using marijuana. Soon Child Protective Services were notified and Banda quickly lost custody of her son. CPS then notified local law enforcement, and a warrant was obtained to search her home. Authorities discovered a little more than a pound of marijuana and equipment to manufacture cannabis oil. The police said that the items taken from the house were “within easy reach of the child.”